Gaming Bliss

The article that stuck out the most for me was "Bastard of the Old Republic", I for one completely understand the frustration that John Walker was going through. You want to do one thing but your conscience gets in the way even though you are only playing a video game. It seems like even though it is just a video game you connect with your character. It is like you are actually in the game making these difficult decisions that will affect everyone.
I found that the bond that gamers have between them and their character can be extremely strong as if the character is an actual person. It can be so bad that some of these gamers get seriously upset when something bad happen to the video game character. One really good example is one of my friends absolutely refuse to accept the fact that Sephiroth from Final Fantasy 7 died. He gets really depressed and upset when anyone mentions it, and Sephiroth was not even a playable character.
This same friend try to boycott Devil May Cry 4, because you no longer played as Dante. It makes me wonder what is it about a video game character that makes people feel such a deep bond with them? I know gamers who like a character so much they surround themselves with anything dealing with that character. My though was that since we spend all that time controlling them we sort of pick up this parent/child type bond with them. But maybe I am way off with that theory, I really can't explain why I named my dog after Soul Calibur's Nightmare. It just felt like the right thing to do at the time. I am still trying to figure out why I did that, my own actions confuse me quite often.
I would love to find out what make us feel like we are one with a character or actually in the game itself we play. Maybe the subconscious need to be a hero, or villain, cause for a unique connection between the games that we play. Psychologist already feel that the type of games that someone plays will tell a great deal about their personality.
It seems to me that when some gamers start playing a video game they really get into it. This feeling of oneness between a video game character and oneself can make us feel as it is really ourselves doing these acts of awesomeness (according to dictionary.com "awesomeness" is a word!!). This may be what fuels people passion for video games, they love the release from the real world that we so desperately need. Assuming that this why people bond with a game character then this path of subconscious thought can cause some to feel that they need to prove something. But this all is just my speculations, maybe isn't any meaning to it. Maybe melding with video game characters is just another one of those weird things that people do for no real reason, who knows humans are an enigma to me.